by schiaparelli » Sun Jan 18, 2015 9:25 am
tbh i feel nervous/unqualified to make broad sweeping statements about clothing consumption ethics in general, and what is the "right" or "wrong" way to approach them. but this thread has produced a lot of self-reflection on how i personally buy, and what standards i have for my clothing.
so, on a personal level:
more and more i'm starting to think that i need to care more about the ethics behind the clothing i consume. i identify as a feminist and i think, as much as is possible to do in daily life without paralyzing yourself, i try to think about my actions and how they interact with larger systems of oppression and injustice. it just feels to me that, if i care this much about fashion, and if i care this much about acting morally, i should really try to investigate and learn more about my clothing.
but it feels really intimidating because, as i mentioned in my earlier post, there are all these red herrings when trying to look for information about ethical clothing production. there are so many brands quick to promote that they're made in germany! made in america! and i generally trust labor laws in the u.s. more than, say, cambodia, but exploitation of workers can happen almost anywhere. and it feels hard to find information about manufacturing/construction practices, and i don't really have the background knowledge to sift through it and decide, "this brand is good, this brand is bad".
so one proxy i use a lot is to just see if a brand/company publishes information about their factories, period. i realize that things like "factory tours" and long paragraphs about how a particular factory was chosen, how it's a family-owned factory that's been that way for generations, &c (e.g. with their factory tours and profiles) might just be a sleek PR move. especially with the everlane stuff, it's a lot of dSLR pictures and discussion about how the factory is used by top luxury brands and so the construction quality is supposedly great, but not so much about ethics.
but it also feels rare that people acknowledge the factory labor behind clothing. h&m has a lot of about their factory conditions, working conditions, corporate ethic standards, and they also on how they want to have fair living wages by 2018. i don't know how much of it is bullshit, but i do tend to trust brands more if they actually publish this information and acknowledge that ethical working conditions are a work in progress. the fact that they publish the plan means that people who know more about this than i do can critique it and point out good/bad things about the plan, and the overall conversation about stuff like this is educational for me, but also keeps the idea of clothing ethics alive in the press and in the public consciousness, to some degree.
also—this thread has focused a lot on labor ethics, but i'm also really interested in environmental ethics and the impact of producing clothing on the environment. nike released an app more than a year ago called '' which contains information about the resources needed to process different materials—e.g. how much water/chemicals/energy it takes to produce/process cotton vs nylon. they have a super comprehensive list of materials and it's really interesting to poke through the data.
(just to continue with the case study of h&m) however, i think the business model of h&m—constantly producing on-trend clothing (that is inherently disposable, due to materials used and the ephemerality of the designs in most cases)—is also problematic. like i said, it's hard for me to get a handle on the industrial-scale ethics of producing clothing, but it's easier for me to look at my own consumption of clothing, and how often i "donate" things. there have been some interesting discussions on how useful donated clothing really is. i read this a while back about the troubling ramifications of second-hand clothing and it was really thought-provoking. i think it's pretty common to depict clothing donations to your local goodwill or something as this black-box system where you're generically "doing good" to "people in need".
i would love to hear specific personal anecdotes/ideas on how other people interact with consumer ethics through their buying. i think this is a fantastic thread idea, but i would really love to see less ideological grandstanding and more discussion/sharing. a lot of us care about ethically-produced clothing. i'm guessing that a lot of us also don't know the best way to have our buying/wearing practices reflect our ideals. i want to know how you guys are doing it.
(edit) i'll be honest, right now i just try to minimize buying fast fashion and i try to buy from companies that talk about their manufacturing process. one of my favorite womenswear brands, , has one of their founders working in saigon, vietnam, where their production facilities are. my general impression/belief is that the proximity of the designer to the production facility/conditions probably means it's fairly ethical—again, just a guess. to be truthful i'm a bit lazy about investigating this stuff, but i would like to get better.